There is never a time when a new issue of Alex + Ada doesn’t cause pure happiness; this issue is no exception. If you thought Ada was super endearing before, it has nothing on her ability to warm a heart now that she’s essentially free. Part of her is still super receptive to Alex, monitoring his routines and checking in with him to make sure he’s alright, but as she experiences everything for the first time, it’s an absolute pleasure to witness. It’s not like watching a child go through their first experiences either, which is interesting to note. While Ada is very much innocent like a child as she goes through all the different types of breakfast foods Alex prepares for her, she lacks the clumsiness of a child discovering the world, and is responsive to the hard hitting, philosophical questions that Alex throws at her, such as how Ada knows what happiness is. Which cuts into the heart of the matter really. On some level, it was about freeing Ada, letting her reach her actual potential, but at the same time, it’s an amazing study on the human condition, nature vs. nurture, what we are taught and what we know instinctively and whether it’s just in us humans. Vaughn and Luna so far are doing a spectacular job in intertwining moral philosophies in human nature and encompassing it with a genuinely sweet story with incredibly relatable characters (to some degree, most of us aren’t androids).

Of course it’s not all sweet moments, the thing about housing an android is that it does come with some stipulations, and now that Ada isn’t under her programming any longer, that makes their relationship that much more complicated, so we also witness the beginnings of both Alex and Ada trying to deal with that. Currently with no good solutions, but Ada does come up with some pretty good alternate solutions to keep her fairly amused and happy. This is guaranteed where readers will fall in love with Ada, if they haven’t already, which is hard to believe, but here we are.

Ada overall seems to be adjusting well and is fairly happy. Unfortunately Alex has a little bit more on the mind that’s troubling him; naturally it’s only going to get even more complicated here on out. Luna and Vaughn once again manage to capture readers in an exciting issue that is both adorable, profound, and gripping in it’s storytelling.